WASHINGTON – City officials in DC say it was the Pentagon that planned to maintain the presence of National Guard troops at Wednesday’s small, unarmed, unarmed and distant Capitol rally. But Pentagon officials say they were only responding to the city’s wishes to “keep things simple.”
Confusion and accusations continue among local and federal law enforcement agencies after Wednesday’s siege of the Capitol building by a pro-Trump crowd, which has now resulted in five deaths, including a Capitol Police officer.
A spokesman for Washington’s mayor’s office, Muriel Bowser, said he was the secretary of the army, not the city, responsible for major decisions in the National Guard’s response, including the delay in mobilization when the violence escalated.
The Secretary of the Army, not DC, set the number of National Guard troops at around 300, decided not to use armored vehicles, and “established that members of the guard should not move east of 9th Street NW”, about nine blocks from the foothills of the Capitol, said DC Mayor Mayor LaToya Foster’s office spokeswoman.
Foster said the Army also delayed the use of the National Guard to support the Capitol Police after the Capitol was breached.
But defense officials said they gave the support that the Capitol Police and the DC government requested and never refused requests from city officials.
The Pentagon said the Capitol Police and the Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department had requested only a supporting role for the National Guard, primarily to deal with traffic checkpoints and subway stations to release police officers for other tasks.
DC National Guard troops “were adequately equipped for the mission requested by the DC government in its written request, which was to provide traffic control at designated intersections and subway stations,” said a senior defense officer. “The DC government made it clear that it wanted unarmed support.”
Any suggestion by DC officials that the Pentagon failed to provide everything the government asked for in its December 31 request is “clearly and demonstrably false,” the defense official told NBC News.
The Pentagon chose to transport the National Guard contingent of more than 300 soldiers in SUVs and minivans instead of armored military vehicles, as it wanted to avoid a high-profile military presence that could potentially increase tension among the crowd at the January 6 rally. , said a second defense officer.
“This was a deliberate attempt to keep things slow and not give the impression that we had to surround our capital with troops,” said the second defense official.
Pentagon officials told reporters at a telephone briefing on Thursday that National Guard troops returned to DC Arsenal to obtain shock equipment from the Capitol Police and the DC government called for help as the situation deteriorated on Wednesday -market.
The Pentagon insisted that it acted quickly to send reinforcements as soon as the request for additional aid was made on Wednesday afternoon, and that it took about two hours to send more troops from the DC National Guard.
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan said on MSNBC on Friday that after receiving a call from the majority leader in the House, Steny Hoyer, during the chaos on Wednesday, begging for his help, he managed to send the state police of Maryland. But, Hogan said, it took about 90 minutes to get Pentagon approval to send the Maryland National Guard.
“I informed him that we had called the guard, but we still had no authorization,” said Hogan to NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, referring to the call to Hoyer.
Pentagon officials said that on Sunday, during a planning meeting, the Department of Defense offered the Capitol Police and the city of Washington additional troops from the National Guard, but were refused.
Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said, “We were told that additional DoD support was not needed.”
But Bowser’s office says that as of Sunday, the Pentagon had not yet approved its initial order, although it would do so later, before Wednesday’s protests.
Kenneth Rapuano, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and global security, said that during the meetings, security forces provided “general descriptions of part of the Internet traffic” from groups that planned to support the Trump rally on January 6. “but in general the assessment we received repeatedly if there was no indication of significant violent protests.”
During a meeting with reporters on Friday, FBI spokesman Steven D’Antuono told reporters that the agency’s threat assessments that led to the Capitol siege on Wednesday showed that “there was no indication that there was anything beyond the activity protected by the first amendment “.
Mosheh Gains contributed.